Im trying to make my 2001 Dodge Ram V8 Magnum more offroad
capable what would be the best way to lift the truck and what hight would be best recomended? Also what bumper winch combo would be best suited for the truck.

 

Welcome to the site. I will move this thread to the second generation Ram section,
FF

 

It depends also what type of offroading you plan to do. Do you plan to go mudding? Or doing crawling/climbing type stuff?

If you're going to go mudding, you're probably going to want some nasty mud terrains. A 5" will clear 35's, but if you want bigger than that I think the general rule is an inch per tire.

If you're gonna go crawling, then you want your center of gravity to stay pretty low yet having big enough tires to get traction.

In either situation, I would suggest making sure your engine is in peak maintenance then get gears. There are many threads about gears on this site about what gears for what tires. You'll probably want lockers too. There are many threads about this too.

 

ok ive done some reading on gears but i still dont understand what everyones talking about? Sorry for the all the trouble this is only my second truck and well lets just say i come from a city family but im more country.

 

Welcome to the site.

 

Ok I give a quick shot to get you understanding, first you got the motor, it puts power to the trannsmission, which has clutches in it and different gear ratio's for each gear to put the power from the motor to the ground in a efficient way(imagine if you only had one gear it would either reach a low top speed really quick or take forever to get to 80.

From the transmission it goes to transfer case in a 4x4, this allows power to be sent back up to the front axle, while also sending it to the rear axles...this done via the driveshafts

the drive shaft connects to the rear axle housing and the pinion gear, the pinion gear meshes into the ring gear which in turn spins the carrier that it is bolted to.

This spins the axle shafts, depending on the rear end, open diff/limited slip/locker, is how this is achieved, open diff- spins one tire, Limted slip- will spin both at different speeds, one with less traction will spin more, locker- locks axle shafts together and spins both tires at same speed.

The pinion gear and ring gear which is in bold above are what are referred to gears, they are another point like the transmission that changes the overall gear ratio to the ground, your truck was built with the stock tire size in mind and has gears setup for those tires.

When you change to larger tires you change the overall gear ratio because of the added circumference of the tire. This will cause the motor to work harder causing a slower acceleration and a higher topspeed, this can be nullified by outside factors like wind resistance and rolling resistance.

To get back to stock you need to change your gears(remember bold part), since you want offroad capabilities you might want to go to a lower overall gear ratio than stock.

Rearend and frontend both work in the same general way

here's some helpful gears to tire size reccomedations
3.55 for stock tires
4.10 for towing and offroading with stock tires, or for use wth 33's
4.56 for towing with 33's, or normal driving with 35's
4.88 for towing and offroading with 35's, normal driving with 37's

You do not want to mess up the install of gears so take it to a professional shop to do this and make sure they have done one on a dodge before

ps......you must change the gears in the front and rear at the same time or you will destroy your transfer case by putting it into 4x4

 

Get a rear locker. It will do far more for offroad ability than any other part. Next on my list would be more aggressive tires, they don't have to be big, just aggressive.

 

Hey thanks guys this is a huge help!